


The Uses of Sorrow

by havisham



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: First Meetings, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Porn Battle, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 13:55:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This, too, was a gift.</i> </p><p>Ralph meets Andrew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Uses of Sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle XIV, with the prompts: [any], forgiveness, honor. 
> 
> It contains, alas, very little ketchup.

_Someone I loved once gave me_

_ a box full of darkness. _

_It took me years to understand_

_that this, too, was a gift._

 

 

A hipflask burned in the pocket of Ralph’s coat. The sky overhead was charcoal grey, and everywhere was the raw misery of early spring. It had begun to rain, a steady, persistent drizzle, as soon as he had reached the gates of the cemetery. Laurie’s gravestone had turned dark, the dates had become edged in moss. They were all he could see.

He got a handkerchief out and rubbed uselessly at a smudge of dirt that clung to one of the letters of Laurie’s middle name. There was a step behind him, and he turned to tell the sexton than he would be a few minutes more.

It wasn’t the sexton at all.

It was as if some interfering artist had taken a picture of him and rubbed away some stray lines, softened the shadows, changed the shape of the chin, and added an entirely unsuitable haircut. It was himself, but not.

The boy was shivering, his jacket thin and inadequate in the chill of the evening. There was a stubborn look on his face, as if he thought Ralph would chase him off. His blond hair was plastered against his skull. He didn’t have a hat, or an umbrella, the silly creature.

In his hands he held a small bouquet of violets, already wilting.

Andrew Raynes was both less than he had imagined, and more.

“Ralph Lanyon,” he said, a question and statement both.

“Yes,” Ralph said briefly, putting his handkerchief back in his pocket. There did not seem to be anything more to say. Except -- “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“No,” Andrew said, his month severe. “We haven’t.”

 

 

*

Ralph had been driving that night. His head had been clear, his hands steady. Even Spuddy knew he was good for it. He laughed when Ralph had kissed him in the dark of the lane, his perfect finger curled around the collar of Ralph’s coat.

It was a long ride home. Laurie drifted off in the middle of an involved story about a dog, a middle-aged lady, and a very compromising position that he had been thrown into because of them both. It was a funny story; Ralph had only heard it a few times now. He glanced over at Laurie’s sleeping form, he smiled. His attention drifted, only for moment, a second. He pulled Laurie’s coat around his shoulders. Laurie snuggled into it, with a murmured thanks.

That was happiness. Pure, though not exactly simple.

The moment afterward was full of broken glass and twisting metal, blaring noise, and blood. So much of that. There was another car, filled with people who had come streaming out, shouting.

Ralph woke up without a scratch on him. It could not have been any further from a miracle.

 

 

 

*

They trudged over to Laurie’s cottage, it was Ralph’s now, much to the eternal displeasure of the Straikes. Especially the reverend, though it was true that Mrs. Straike could hardly bear to look at him. Needless to say, Ralph did not attend church when he came to visit Laurie’s grave.

The kitchen was shut up, like the rest of the house, but there was an old tin of tea in the back of a cupboard. Ralph lit a fire and Andrew made the tea.

 

 

 

*

Ralph’s hands were always steady, even as they unscrewed the hipflask, at long last, and poured some of the contents into his teacup. It quite ruined the flavor, but Ralph had never cared very much for tea, neither the taste, nor the ritual of it.

There had been no reason for Laurie to cut Andrew out of his life at all.

Except that Laurie had felt that there was, and that was what he had done.

Except Laurie had written to him, occasionally, apparently. Letters that Ralph had not let himself know anything about.

“That was how I learned -- you see, about the other person, who had...” Andrew paused, with a delicate wash of color suffusing his pale face. “Told me such malicious lies.”

“They were mostly true,” Ralph said blandly, taking a sip of his tea.

“A lie could have the truth in it, and still be a lie,” Andrew said. His hair had dried curly, a bright nimbus around his head, but the expression on his face was far from angelic. He eyed Ralph's teacup suspiciously. “You drink too much.”

“Or not enough,” Ralph said, feeling his face going red. He had never showed it so badly, before.

“What happened was an accident,” Andrew said, that horrible, persistent ghost. Why couldn’t he go?

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“I know what is and isn’t my responsibility,” said Ralph crisply, in his Head Boy’s voice, the one that had evolved into his naval officer’s voice. Andrew shifted in his seat and frowned.

Ralph could tell that Andrew had been the kind of boy who had been unhappy in school, perhaps hadn’t fit in from the first, had longed for his mother.

Ralph, on the other hand, had been very happy at school, until he hadn’t been.

Andrew got up, leaving his tea behind. Ralph watched him make slow circuits around the room. He stopped in front of Ralph’s chair. “I’ve never been here before. Will you show me his room?”

To his own surprise, Ralph agreed.

 

 

*

Laurie’s old room was stripped bare of the things that would have been there when he was a boy. The elderly tenants had no use for the upper floor of the house, up the narrow, steep staircase. The furniture lay under white sheets, like icebergs on the North Atlantic. It was very cold here too. Their breath came in white wisps in the dark. Still, Andrew walked around, looking around. Ralph thought he must have been imagining how things used to be. This was where Laurie had dreamed, where he had studied, and outside, where he had played with Gyp.

(Did Andrew know about Gyp? About the dog Ralph had planned to give Laurie, once rationing eased a little? No, surely not that.)

It did no good, these kind of imaginings. The present pressed even closer then; it was impossible to recapture the past. Ralph wanted to go back to the kitchen, to go back to the railway station, to go back to London. Andrew stood still in the middle of the room, still lost in thought.

“I didn’t know him very well,” Andrew said at last. “All of it took so little time. And I was very jealous of how much he thought of you. I felt as it I wasn’t enough --”

“You were very young,” Ralph started to say, and Andrew turned back to him, his eyes hooded.

“Not as young as all that,” he said.

Ralph had to concede then that perhaps their similarities were more than skin-deep.

 

 

*

When Andrew first kissed him, it wasn’t a shock, it wasn’t an earth-shattering revelation.

Ralph gripped hard against the banister, his leather glove slipping down. It came to him then that he knew exactly nothing about Andrew outside what he had heard from Laurie. He did not know how Andrew had spent the war, what he did afterward. Andrew was a mystery, and he had kissed Ralph shyly, tentatively, in fact. But he seemed quite sure of what he was doing.

Ralph reached into his pocket and offered him the hipflask. Andrew took a swig of it and handed it back to Ralph, who could not keep the astonishment from his face. Would wonders never cease!

They moved suddenly apart as if guilt were a knife stuck into their ribs. Laurie hovered in the edges of their thoughts, beloved, lost, but ever present. Andrew blinked and breathed out. “I must go.”

Ralph looked out of the window into the darkness outside. “You can’t, it’s far too late. The last train left hours ago.”

They made dinner with a collection of tins from the kitchen, some potted meat of indistinct variety, tinned peas, and some stale bread Ralph had brought down with him. They were careful not to touch, avoiding each other’s space as best they could, avoiding each other’s eye.

There was a guest room down the hall from the kitchen that could serve for Andrew. Ralph retired to his own room and cracked open the cabinet where he had kept a cache of rum away from Laurie’s scrutiny. He had planned to make a night of steady drinking and thinking sad thoughts, but a glass or two was enough to send him to sleep.

He dreamed of Laurie, of course, painful dreams that left him awake again, staring at the ceiling.

He heard a scrape of bare feet against the wooden floor, and Andrew appeared at his door, his hair tousled and his face hidden in shadow. Ralph said nothing; instead he sat up and patted the empty space beside him. Andrew climbed into the bed. It shook a little at his weight. He was perfect, Ralph thought, there was nothing missing from him, nothing twisted.

His skin was smooth -- and he grasped at Ralph’s ruined fingers, with curiosity that was neither cold nor warm. Only present.

Perhaps this was an experiment to him, a what-if that was finally to be explored.

“Surely you must disapprove of this, at least your religion would,” Ralph said with a grim smile. Andrew cocked his head, as if gauging Ralph’s apparent sincerity.

“I was in Germany when the war ended,” he said carefully. “Dave knew someone -- do you know about Dave? --” Ralph nodded, he had a vague notion, anyhow -- “I was given a job there, registering the people who came out of the camps. It was all -- I couldn’t keep all of my certainties...”

He paused, took a breath, and then two. “Things aren’t as neat as I thought they were.” He shook his head, embarrassed. “You must think this is very facile, I’m sorry that I can’t express it better. Laurie was very clever with words, I know.”

“He was,” Ralph said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “You needn’t talk about it, if it pains you.”

“I was always taught to be honest,” Andrew said, his eyes a deep, candid blue. There was a slight smile on his lips, and his hair (much too long, Ralph thought) fell into his eyes.

Ralph could swear that he, himself, had never been so young as that.

And because it had been a very long time since he had someone else in his bed, and because he was lonely, and because it seemed to be the thing to do (Ralph did not always do the right thing, but he always did what felt right at the moment), he leaned over and kissed Andrew, gently, on the lips.

Andrew sprang to life and bore down upon him. Andrew was very eager, almost painfully so. Desire, so long-repressed, came ravaging out, and could have taken Ralph to pieces, if he let it.

Ralph did not flatter himself, he knew well enough that this was not for him, this desire, this longing. But did he not feel it too? _Lost, lost, lost,_ the thought battered inside his skull. _No more shall we meet again._

They were both just replacements, that was the essential similarity between them.

 

 

*

Andrew came quickly under Ralph’s (expert) ministrations. A warm flush spread through his skin, and he shivered, unable, unwilling to speak. Ralph could feel the prickly pattern of gooseflesh rub against him, and he threw open the blanket and beckoned him. “You’ll freeze,” he said, frowning at Andrew’s hesitation.

They did not touch like newly-made lovers do. They slept apart, but easily, as if some spell was laid upon them. The house shifted and sighed. Outside the night wore away into morning, into a clean and kindly spring day.

**Author's Note:**

> The epitaph and title are from Mary Oliver's poem, “The Uses of Sorrow". 
> 
> Thank you, Naraht and Elleth, for taking a look at it.


End file.
